There are times, thankfully very seldom, when one wonders if the trials and tribulations of farming life are really worth it. Such has been the past week for me here on the Triple H. Now anyone who has livestock knows that there will always be ups and downs and when you are at the bottom of one of those downswings it seems it never rains but pours.
I guess on the whole we have been very fortunate in our pig raising endeavours over the years. From way back when we first started raising our own piglets many years ago we have had the good fortune to own some lovely breeding stock with the sows successfully raising an average of ten to twelve piglets per litter to weaning age. The few who failed to make the grade of bringing at least eight to weaning were given a second chance then down the road they went. It would be fair to say our pig raising ventures have always been more or less on the upswing… until now. Along with the good there inevitably has to be a little of the bad.
Mary has been our first girl to farrow this summer and she popped out a lovely litter of twelve pink little porkers just over a week ago. There is something so peaceful about looking into a pen and seeing mum lying contentedly on her side, grunting softly to a whole row of piglets nursing away at her milk filled belly. She has always been a super mum and this, being her fourth litter, delighted us once again with her and Casper’s babies. Within a couple of days the babies were trundling after Mary outside and were perky as can be. Then followed two of days of cooler weather complete with numerous heavy rain storms rolling through which we were very thankful for so did not complain at all. When the piglets were only five days old one little chap was acting a tad on the lethargic side. The following morning I found the wee thing lying beside mum dead as a doornail. Now it is common to lose one or two piglets from a large litter as mum can sometimes have a hard time keeping track of all the little ones, but this chap showed no sign at all of being squashed. I checked the others and noticed a couple more were looking a little depressed; a piglet should not just lie calmly in your hands when you pick them up! A dreadful heavy weight in settled in the pit of my stomach, something was wrong.
Now all sorts of things run through your mind when you have a sick animal on your hands. Did they get chilled? Are they anemic? Baby pigs are born with a very limited iron supply and many pig breeders give the newborns an injection of iron, since our pigs have immediate access to natural dirt they have never needed a shot as they start rooting and eating dirt at a couple days old and obtain iron naturally from the soil. But as I looked closer at them they did indeed look paler than normal. We had suddenly gone from temperatures in the upper nineties to nice and cool seventies, accompanied by thunderstorms and some torrential downpours. Had this kept the piglets huddled in their shelter and kept them from rooting around in the dirt? Did I end up with my first ever case of anemic piglets? I immediately called our vet Colleen in John Day and made a trip to town with the poor little deceased piglet in a bucket on the front seat beside me. Colleen is a great vet, conscientious and very knowledgeable. She looked at the poor little thing and ran through the gamut of conditions that could be going on, thankfully she knows how fussy I am with our animals and knows we keep a “closed herd” with our pigs, meaning we do not do outside breeding with our boar, our sows never leave our place etc. So a liver sample was sent off and we will get results back this coming week as to what it may or may not be. In the mean time all our piglets got an iron shot in case it was a just simple anemia which had hit them suddenly and very hard.
In the meanwhile I have been worried sick about my little ones. Mary started to dry up her milk supply and it is with dread I head down to her pen each morning just knowing I am likely to find yet another casualty and sure enough each morning another little one has passed away. I wrack my brains as to what I have done differently with Mary this time around but only one thing comes to mind, I decided to worm my sows a week ago with a pelleted wormer I have used before, one that is purportedly safe for pregnant sow, gilts and breeding stock. Has this been the cause of all the heartache? I have never wormed one of my girls right after they farrowed before as it is usually done a couple of weeks prior to them dropping their litter. Has this been the trigger to cause problems with the babies and to cause Mary to start drying up her milk supply? How frustrating it is to not have a definitive answer and even more frustrating to not know how to remedy the situation.
Yes, we have been so fortunate with our pigs. Maybe this is just a reminder that farm life is full of challenges, ups and downs, trials and tribulations no matter how long one may have been farming. Just when things are rolling along a smooth track and you are feeling pretty smug with yourself Mother Nature throws some bumps and boulders in the path for you to navigate. Will those bumps be too much for you? Will they cause you to veer off looking for a smoother way? Or will you plug along the bumpy trail having faith that somewhere just ahead lays a clear and straight road. Yesterday I was feeling as if the path I was struggling down was just too hard for me to follow, I was beleaguered with the “What if’s”… what if I lose all Mary’s piglets, what if something happens to my other girls when they farrow, what if I caused this by worming them when I did, what if……
Yes the bumpy road was getting to me but then as always Darrell brought me back on track. It will indeed be terrible if Mary loses her entire litter and it is disheartening and frustrating to feel so helpless in not knowing why this happened or how to fix it, but answers will come, things will get better and life will go onwards. I think I will have another cup of tea to fortify myself for one more walk down that bumpy road for yes, I have faith that a smoother path must be somewhere ahead…